Tag: Anthony Pettis

So after all the chaos that threatened to turn UFC 206 in to one of the more unfortunate cards of the year, things ended up working out pretty well. The main event was exciting, the two bouts before it packed with action and all in all the event ended up being truly memorable. But despite that there was a shadow looming over this event. It was far from perfect in terms of “professionalism” as a number of fighters missed weight. Though it’s something to be scrutinized, you have to wonder how this weight cutting issue is going to be fixed.

UFC 206 was in some real trouble. The loss of the Daniel Cormier/Anthony Johnson main event made it seem like the event would be less than stellar. When Anthony Pettis and a number of other fighters missed weight the day before the event it seemed like UFC 206 was doomed (more on that later). But after all was said and done the show ended up being one of the more exciting events of the year, namely for some featherweight action at the top of the card.

The main event of UFC 206 may be tarnished by the fact that former lightweight champion Anthony Pettis missed weight by three pounds, yet the match up between he and Max Holloway is still intriguing. But it does but a big asterisk on the event as a whole. The UFC promoting the match to an interim title fight certainly lent more gravity to the situation, but it also forced them to unceremoniously strip Conor McGregor of his title only to have the UFC 206 title fight fall apart. If Holloway wins he still gets the belt. If Anthony Pettis wins he gets his show and win money minus twenty percent. Nevertheless, the fight itself is what counts and breaking it down is still the goal.

It seems everyone’s catching on to the new economic turn of the UFC. Previous nice guys from Tyron Woodley, Demetrius “Mighty Mouse” Johnson, to now Featherweight interim champ Jose Aldo are calling for big money fights! Where did they learn this current trend? Daddy Dana, that’s who.

Following a 15-month absence from the sport that saw him basically break every traffic law known to man, former/still-sort-of-current UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones returned to the ring on Saturday to take on heated rival Daniel CormierOvince St. Preux for the coveted interim LHW belt, because f*ck it, we’re just giving out interim titles to everyone now! (begins Oprah-style “And YOU get an interim belt!” chant*)

As you might expect, Jones looked every bit as dominant as he always has — outgunning OSP on the feet, the mat, and even throwing some fancy spinning sh*t in there — while still displaying some signs of a man who has spent more of the past year in the court than he has in the cage. If you’re the MMA media, this can only mean one thing: Jon Jones has lost it.

The guy who literally broke his opponent’s arm with a kick in the second round? That wasn’t a guy who would have had a chance at beating Daniel Cormier, according to all theleadingexperts (chief among whom happens to be, you guessed it, Daniel Cormier). I’m not sure if Cormier would still be injured in the fantasy scenario that we so often like to peddle as “analysis” or even “news” here in the MMA game, but the moral here is that Jon Jones got very lucky on Saturday night. Because REASONS.

After the jump: We break down the rest of UFC 197 with takes hot enough to melt steel.

It was a mantra that Dominick Cruz had been repeating for years…literally, years. In the two years he had spent battling injuries since his last fight and the four years he spent doing the same before his *other* last fight, Cruz has kindly been reminding us that 1) Ring rust is a lie 2) He never really lost his belt and 3) The members of Team Alpha Male were a bunch of meathead jocks that couldn’t ‘andle his riddum’. But until last night, the former WEC and UFC bantamweight champion was all talk.

“You can’t hit what you can’t catch,” was another trademarked slogan that Cruz made sure to repeat ad nauseum in the trash talk-filled lead up to his bantamweight title fight with TJ Dillashaw at Fight Night 81, and without comparing him to the one true MMA psychic, Mystic Mac, it’s safe to say that “The Dominator” might have a magical crystal ball of his own.

Now, let’s all try not to get too excited about the news we’re about to deliver, because we all know the long and heartbreaking history of one of the competitors involved, but OMG DOMMY CRUZ VS TJ DILLY IS FINALLY GON’ HAPPEN!!!!!!

It seems that more often than not these days, the UFC likes to sell us on the invincibility of its champions. “Anderson Silva is the G.O.A.T.” “Renan Barao is one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters in the UFC right now, if not the greatest.” “Jose Aldo had sex with my blind wife last night and now she can see!” I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the point.

That’s not meant as a knock on the promotion, mind you. I mean, you tell me how else you’re going to market a humble, softly-spoken foreigner who knows maybe a dozen words in English, if not based on his skills in the cage? This is the fight game after all, and Conor McGregor would still be collecting welfare checks if he didn’t possess the actual skill to back up his mouth. Yet time and time again, it seems that the UFC’s go-to strategy for hyping a fighter becomes akin to placing a hex on them. And when/if the champion in question does lose, it isn’t long before the conversation shifts to “Anderson Silva is a roidhead.” “Renan Barao is going to get smoked in the rematch.” “Jose Aldo is only keeping Conor McGregor’s seat warm.”

To be perfectly clear, this isn’t how I feel the UFC was marketing Anthony Pettis heading into his UFC 185 title fight with Rafael Dos Anjos. The promotion was marketing him on his skillset, sure, which again — how could you not when his highlight reel includes a flying off-the-cage ninja kick? I’m saying that this is how the MMA media seemed to be billing Pettis in the weeks leading up to last Saturday. Blame it on the stupidity and/or rampant fanboyism that affects even the unbiased (and more importantly, credentialed) members, blame it on whatever you want, but there was an air of invincibility surrounding Pettis. We were like a deer caught in the headlights of “Showtime’s” greatness, so much so that we barely even took the time to notice that Dos Anjos was there.